White Lines (11 page)

Jada’s mother never wrote her back. She told herself that it was no big deal. But the child inside of her cried a little for the love her mother had never given her. Getting through rehab without her mother’s support and forgiveness was hard for Jada. She didn’t admit that, not even to herself. But the fact that she never got a response from Edna cut her deeply. She felt as if she’d been kicked while she was down. Soon the counselors and their speeches and rhetoric became noisy belligerence to her. Jada heard them. She listened to what they said. And she knew she had a problem. But she wouldn’t allow herself to really believe that she couldn’t handle her problem on her own. She got tired of going to
group. “Group” was what they called the group therapy sessions. She was tired of it. She didn’t want to hear about other people’s struggles, and she was sick of thinking about her own. She felt that since she couldn’t change her past, she would much rather try to forget it. All she wanted now was to try to stay clean, and to pick up the pieces from where they’d fallen. Jada was ready to get out of there and get back on track. She felt like she had the power to control her need for cocaine. She thought she was strong enough, mentally, to never use crack again. And she left rehab in early 1995, feeling in her heart that she wasn’t going to smoke crack anymore. They wanted her to stay for another thirty days. The counselors felt that she could benefit from more time in the structured environment. But since they could only force her to stay for ninety days, Jada didn’t stay a day longer than she had to.

She was determined to make a clean start. So she steered clear of West Brighton, where she’d been lured into a life of drugs and crazy living in the first place. She hooked back up with Shante, after running into her at a party, when Shante told her that she’d been off the crack for four months and was determined to stay that way. Shante had moved out of her mother’s place and gotten her own apartment on Steuben Street. Shante let Jada stay with her from time to time. She had a man, though, and he was there quite often. Shante had a studio apartment, so there was no way Jada could stay there and go unnoticed. So she was homeless again, living hand to mouth and staying with Shante when she could. Jada was sleeping on a different person’s couch every other night. She got sick of that and didn’t want to go into a homeless shelter. She didn’t want to admit that she was that alone in the world. Months passed. Then Jada went back to West Brighton one day. She decided to go and see her mother.

It was about four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, and Jada figured Edna would be home. Her schedule had always been predictable. On the weekends Edna normally woke up early and went out to pay her bills, and then to the supermarket. Jada knew that Edna would be home by this time in the afternoon. As she approached her mother’s home, Jada was nervous. She had no idea what she would say when Edna came to
the door. She tried to come up with an opening line, and she couldn’t think of one. So she decided to wait and see what her mother’s reaction would be to seeing Jada after so long. She figured the words would come to her once she saw Edna’s face again. Jada went to her mother’s door, and listened. She could hear the TV in the background, and she wondered what her mother was watching. She wondered if she still watched the same shows at the same time every day. Nervously, Jada stepped back from the door and knocked on it. She thought she saw her mother’s eye appear at the peephole, yet there was no answer. Jada stood there and knocked for the longest time, unwilling to accept the fact that Edna wasn’t answering. Jada knew that her mother was in there. She had heard the TV on when she got there; and then, when she started knocking on the door, the TV volume was suddenly muted. Jada could hear her mother’s footsteps, even though Edna thought she was tiptoeing. Jada knew she was home. But Edna wouldn’t let her daughter in. Finally Jada resigned herself to the fact that Edna wasn’t going to open the door. Crushed, Jada decided that that would be the last time she ever went back to her mother’s house.

Feeling rejected, and tempted to go back to the numbness of getting high, Jada decided to go to the group home to see her sister. She got on the bus and headed for Mariner’s Harbor. The bus ride seemed to take forever. All she could think about was the fact that her mother wouldn’t let her in. Her own mother didn’t want to see her or talk to her. Edna hadn’t answered her letters when Jada had written to her from rehab. Sitting in a seat near the window, Jada gazed out of it with tears cascading down her face.

When she finally arrived at the group home, Jada was disappointed to find that Ava wasn’t there. She fought off the feeling that she was alone in the world again. She told herself that Ava would probably be back pretty soon. So since she had no place else to go, and she didn’t know where any of her friends were after all the time she’d spent away from Staten Island, Jada sat outside the home and waited for Ava to come back. She was feeling sorry for herself and wondered if she should give up on trying to stay clean and just go back to what had made her feel
good—crack. But still she waited for her sister, trying to block out the urge to backslide.

While she was sitting out in front of the group home, waiting for Ava, a black Benz drove by three different times. The windows were tinted, and Jada couldn’t see who was driving. But she knew it was the same car, and she wondered why the driver seemed to be circling the block. About an hour passed, as she sat there in the front of the building. The next time the car passed her by, she was walking to the store on the next corner. The car pulled up beside her, and the driver slowed down. He lowered the power windows, and he called out to her.

“Excuse me, do you mind if I talk to you for a minute?”

“Yes. I mind.” Jada didn’t break stride. She kept walking at the same swift pace, switching her ass in her Lee jeans. Jada had gained back some of the weight she’d lost. She looked thick and sexy in all the right places as she strolled along.

“Well, I’m gonna follow you, anyway.” He smiled at her, still driving slowly alongside her.

Jada kept on walking, only glancing once at the cutie behind the wheel of the black luxury car. His smile was disarming, but she knew it was the jiggle in her jeans that had him driving at twenty miles below the speed limit. She had sold herself for drugs enough times for her to resent any man who pulled up in a car next to a lady walking alone. She felt that she knew his intentions right away. He was adorable, but Jada wasn’t in the mood for some local wannabe trying to get some play. She was still upset about what had happened at her mother’s house, and was upset that Ava was nowhere to be found. She kept right on walking, her focus on the store up ahead.

“What’s your name?” the guy in the car asked.

No response.

“Wow. You really don’t wanna talk to me, huh?”

“Nah.” Jada reached the store and walked inside, hoping the stranger would take the hint and keep on moving. She had no such luck. The unfamiliar young man parked his car and followed the unidentified beauty into the store. Once inside, he scanned the tiny aisles until he found his
mark. Jada stood by the freezers, scanning the sodas, looking for a Cherry Coke.

He walked up behind Jada, smiling at the apple bottom she possessed. He loved a nice ass, and Jada’s was certainly a work of art. Her waist was small, and her bad-girl stance was intriguing him. “I can’t believe you ain’t gonna give me a chance to talk to you.”

Jada rolled her eyes dramatically, turned around, and faced him. “I can’t believe that you really can’t take no for an answer.”

“I don’t like hearing no. Especially when I have my heart set on something.” He sized her up tastefully, wondering why he was so mesmerized by her eyes. It wasn’t every day that he noticed something like a woman’s
eyes.
That wasn’t really his style. He usually noticed the obvious, the most prominent bodily features: tits and asses. But this girl’s eyes were so delicate, almost innocent. And so very sexy. He was captivated.

“Okay. You’re in my way,” Jada said. “Excuse me.”

“Let me get your number.” He stated it, rather than asked it. He made his intentions very clear. “I’ll leave you alone after that, I promise.” Jada laughed at his aggressiveness but was secretly intrigued by his confidence. He had an arrogance about him, which strangely turned her on. He was about six feet tall, well-built, and very handsome. He had a honey-colored complexion, a fresh haircut, and a very costly gold chain on his neck. He wasn’t gorgeous, but was a nice-looking guy, with a smile that was absolutely disarming. Jada liked what she saw, but kept her game face on. When he asked for her number, he crossed his arms on his chest, and Jada took note of the watch, but didn’t recognize the maker; something called “TAG Heuer” that she’d never heard of. But it sure looked expensive. His smile was amazingly contagious, and he had a pair of lips that just begged to be kissed.

“I don’t know who you are.” Jada’s voice was silky as she spoke.

“They call me Born. What’s your name?”

“Nice to meet you, Born. I’m not really looking for a man right now—”

“I didn’t say I want to be your man.” He looked directly in her eyes, and noticed that she was scanning the room, looking for a way out. “I
just want to talk to you. That’s all.” Born really wasn’t looking for love, or for commitment. He was looking for a good time with a pretty young woman. And Jada fit the bill perfectly.

Jada finally looked directly at him. “I don’t have a phone.” She put her hands on her hips, certain that now he would leave her alone. Jada wished that her statement was false, but it was pure truth. She had no phone, no place to really call home, no plan. She felt so lost. She didn’t want to go back to the drugs, to the sex and the misery. But at the moment, she had no idea where else to go. All she really wanted was her sister, and she had no idea where Ava was.

Born entertained the idea of giving her his pager number. But she might not use it, and he didn’t want to take the chance. Thinking on his feet, he said, “So, then let me take you to eat, somethin’ real quick. If I bore you to death, you can walk out and leave me.”

Jada looked at him, visibly unmoved. She didn’t know this guy, and she wasn’t about to go off somewhere with this stranger. Sensing her hesitation, Born spoke up.

“I ain’t the boogeyman, ma. You ain’t gotta be nervous around me.” He smiled. “Plus, you look like you could probably beat my ass, anyway.”

Jada chuckled, and still wavered. She wasn’t sure it was a good idea to go off with some dude she had just met. But she was broke, her sister was missing in action, her mother was shutting her out, and she was hungry. The man standing before her was a welcome distraction, and she hesitantly accepted. She followed Born to his car, which was parked unlocked, with the key still hanging in the ignition. For Jada it was easy to surmise that this young man in the Benz, with the gold chain, fancy watch, and movie-star smile, was a hustler. Born knew that no one would dare touch his car, even with the key in the ignition in the middle of the day. Jada had been around all kinds of players in the game during the days she spent living in Brooklyn, as well as in the streets of Staten Island. She knew the signs of a bailer, and she could tell that Born was a man to contend with. She could sense his abundance of confidence by the way he had approached her. Jada suspected that he was used to having
his way, and that he was cocky. But she also noticed his charm and his wit. She figured that at least for that afternoon, Born could be someone who she might not mind spending time with. She sat back against the leather passenger seat and gazed out the window as he looked over at her, nestled comfortably in his car.

“So, what you feel like eating?” Born asked, stealing glances at the beauty on his right.

Jada shrugged her shoulders. “It don’t matter. Whatever you want is fine.”

Born raised an eyebrow, slyly. “Don’t tell me that. Because I think I see what I want already.”

Jada looked at him snottily, and then rolled her eyes. Looking out the window once again, she said, “Well, for now, just stick to food. That’s all.”

Born smiled and nodded, directing his attention to the road ahead of them. He wondered what he should make of this girl with a lovely face and a nasty attitude. He wasn’t sure if she would turn out to be a headache or had some potential. But there was something about her that made him want to dig deeper. He felt that under all that toughness was a sensuality that hadn’t been tapped into yet. He figured he might as well find out if it was worth the trouble. He pulled into the parking lot of the diner on Forest Avenue and parked his Benz. He couldn’t wait to see if this first date would prove to be their last.

Turns out, it was the start of something big.

1980

Marquis Graham stood proudly, watching his father work the crowd. They were in a shopping plaza on Targee Street, standing outside of the Zebra Lounge, and Leo was chatting animatedly with a group of his cronies. They laughed and talked about the Knicks game that had been on TV the night before. Marquis watched his dad, soaking up his aura and marveling at how easily he stole the spotlight whenever he stepped onto the scene. At eight years old, Marquis was like a sponge. He soaked up everything around him, particularly the words and actions of his father and his friends.

The thing that made Marquis the proudest was the fact that he had the coolest father in the world. Leo Graham was a living legend in the hood. Everywhere he went people respected him, some almost bowed to him. Whenever he walked into a room, it was all eyes on him. Leo’s role in the life of his son had not been a traditional one. Leo had been arrested for manslaughter when Marquis was two years old, and had served five years for that crime. He got to know his youngest son through occasional visitation up north, and through the updates his wife, Ingrid Graham, gave him. He was released when Marquis was seven years old. Leo was in and out. He was here and there. But when he finally came home,
everything was alright. For Marquis, every day was sunshine now that Daddy was home.